


Let Her Roll

by CrazyTaraWitch



Category: Babylon 5
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-10-20
Updated: 2014-10-20
Packaged: 2018-02-21 23:10:13
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,261
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2485643
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CrazyTaraWitch/pseuds/CrazyTaraWitch
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Let him roll, Lord let him roll.<br/>Bet he’s gone to Dallas, rest his soul.<br/>Let him roll, Lord let him roll.<br/>He always said that Heaven was just a Dallas whore…</p>
            </blockquote>





	Let Her Roll

**Author's Note:**

> Inspired by Guy Clark’s “Let Him Roll”, which I highly recommend listening to.  
> This story was in my head for a long time before it was written, and even after leaving it for two months and making edits I’m still not satisfied, but the idea is close to my heart. Some of the writing is awkward due to loosely incorporating lines from the song.

When they found her body, Delenn couldn’t bring herself to cry. For 8 years Susan Ivanova had been her closest friend, and for herself she was sad for the loss; as Susan had once said, she had buried so many friends. But in her heart, Delenn felt certain Susan would have felt relief, and perhaps even happiness. Her friend was now in the place where no shadows fall, with her many loved ones who had gone before. And perhaps… perhaps she wouldn’t be so broken there.

~*~*~*~*~

There had always been cracks in Susan Ivanova. From the first time they met more than 30 years ago until the day she died, there were fractures in her spirit and walls in her heart. When she had come to Minbar after John’s death, Delenn began to realize how many more pieces were missing than there had once been, as if each loss had chipped away a little piece of herself. It was far from a foreign concept to Delenn; her grief over Dukhat had created wounds and guilt that she would carry with her even beyond the rim, and Lennier and John… She hadn’t seen her best friend in 27 years, not since the day they left Babylon 5, and even now she couldn’t say if she’d forgiven him, yet she knew seeing him once more was her greatest desire for the rest of her life, because he had been a part of her. Yet even when Lennier had been lost to her, she’d had her husband, and then her child, such bright spots to live for, and she had loved them completely. For 20 years she had a life with the man she loved, and even now he was gone she had 20 years of memories to hold onto. But Susan…

Twice a year, Susan had vodka delivered. Delenn was not ignorant of the fact that on Earth Susan had consumed alcohol far more often, but her friend seemed to make up for the regularity with her intensity. Once for Talia and once for Marcus, Susan would drink; she would start a week before the anniversary of Talia being erased, slow at first until the day came, then she’d lock herself away for the night with her vodka and unshed tears; in the weeks that followed, she would be quiet, empty; then in the days before the anniversary of Marcus trading his life for hers she would start slowly once more, until the night when she became anything but quiet, some years sobbing and others throwing against the walls everything she could get her hands on. Even after all the time that had already passed before Susan took over the Anla’Shok, Delenn noticed these rituals seemed to get worse with each passing year, the withdrawal starting longer and longer before Talia’s anniversary and the emotional hangover lasting longer and longer after Marcus’s. 

The first year, Susan’s anger and violence over Marcus’s death had frightened her; she had forced her way into her friend’s quarters after a Ranger had come to find her, uncertain what to do, and was disturbed to see her friend curled almost into a ball against the wall, tears streaming down her face and broken glass shimmering across the floor. Susan yelled—not really at her, but in her general direction. She apologized later, but if Delenn was honest it had changed the way she looked at her friend, just a little; she didn’t love or respect Susan any less, but she realized the woman’s wounds were not so healed as she had assumed, and that Susan was even stronger than she had known to hide so much damage.

Of course Delenn knew that hiding damage wasn’t the only way to be strong; there was another kind of strength, a strength that dealt with problems instead of hiding them, but she had suspected her friend would never see things that way.

In the years that followed, it came to be Susan’s first vigil that troubled her more. Frightening though her anger could be, at least with Marcus she seemed able to direct it outward. With Talia… All that pain was still silent, still held deep inside even after 30 years, anger turned inward to destroy Susan Ivanova a little more with every day, all that anger and loss ripping away at her from the inside out.

Susan hadn’t had 20 years of happiness to look back on. Her life was so weighed by loss, and she was older than her years. Susan had been so strong for so long. It was time for her to not be strong anymore.

~*~*~*~*~

David came home for the funeral. They sat together in the front row, the closest thing Susan had had to family at the end. Michael and Stephen had also come, and it was a comfort to Delenn to have others there who had known Susan long ago, before she was quite so tired and worn. The ceremony was small, with most of the Anla’Shok choosing to mourn privately; few had known her personally, and so for most the grief was no more than the loss of a good leader, much as it had been when John died.

Michael’s eyes had glistened when he told a story of the time she nearly murdered him for a trick he and Sinclair had played, but he did not cry, and Delenn suspected it was because he knew as well as she did that that Susan, the one who teased and yelled and returned pranks with a playful vengeance, had been gone for many years. Stephen had told a story, and so had Delenn; but they had shed no tears for a woman who had seemed so lost to the world for so long.

David seemed surprised by their lack of emotion. Stephen and Michael left first, and once they were gone he turned to his mother and asked her why she seemed fine with losing a friend who had been so dear.

“It was too many days of fighting the weather,” Delenn tried to explain. “She was fighting against the universe, against life, against even her own self for so long, David, and she was so tired… I will miss her dearly, but she was ready to go. She was ready to pass on from this life and try to find some peace beyond.”

Delenn didn’t know if her son understood; he had such an innocent belief in the power to change worlds that she knew it must be a hard thing for him to accept, but he sat beside her for a while longer, quietly contemplating. Finally, they got up and prepared to leave, but Delenn was drawn aside by the Ranger who was preparing to take Susan’s place as Anla’Shok’Na. She told David to go on without her, but a moment later he was back by her side, face clouded with concern.   
She followed his line of sight to see a woman sitting at the back, dressed in somber grey and looking so very small as she huddled in on herself. Delenn’s breath caught in her throat as she watched the shoulders shake, and she knew if she could have seen behind the wave of blonde hair the tears that had been missing from the rest of them would have been streaming down her face.

“Who is she?” David asked curiously.

Delenn took a moment to steady herself, to feel the solid ground beneath her feet before she answered. “Her name is Talia. She used to be a telepath on Babylon 5.”

**Author's Note:**

> Let her roll, Lord let her roll.  
> Bet she’s gone to B5, rest her soul.  
> Let her roll, Lord let her roll.  
> She always said that Heaven was just a telepath…


End file.
